Toyokawa Shoko doesn't want to become a witch

Who could resist an adorable child with messy hair, a round face, and big eyes?

If she can't find a magical girl, she'll go to the local church or set up her own tent in a park.

Yawata Kairin, as a ronin, is experienced and gives a thumbs up.

In each place I visit, I find a bookstore and browse the local travel magazines to decide on my itinerary for the next period of time.

When I have free time, I stay in the bookstore, browse through books, or help out at the local church.

We walked around, stopping and looking at the surroundings.

Through spring, summer, autumn and winter.

The aftershocks of Witch Night have not yet subsided.

Four years after the disaster, Hailing witnessed firsthand a vicious cycle with no solution.

A chaotic world unseen by ordinary people.

The Tale of Nirvana: Staying True to One's Heart: Chapter 73 The Era of the Witch's Night (Bonus Chapter)

The Reed Plains Magical Girl Gathering was founded five years ago. Back then, things were chaotic, there was no gathering, but there were countless magical girls.

The wishes made when becoming a magical girl will affect her strength to some extent; the more significant the wish, the greater the likelihood that she will possess great power after becoming a magical girl.

Most magical girls sign contracts between the ages of twelve and seventeen. Witch Night turned a large number of girls in this age group into magical girls, and later people called them the initiators of the "Witch Night era".

The wishes made by teenagers are mostly frivolous: "I want to be prettier," "I want to be in a relationship with xxx," "I want to be popular," and so on.

However, the age range of these magical girls born from Witch's Night has expanded to seven to eighteen years old. Their wish is not a pink bubble dream with the characteristics of adolescence, but a very uniform one - to survive.

Their desire to live was strong, their will to live was heavy, and their will to live carried a weight heavier than any other wish. Therefore, their strength was generally a level higher than before.

They are highly capable and numerous.

Magical girls, born in the era of Witch Night, nearly wiped out the witches.

This should have been a good thing. Fighting the witch was a life-or-death struggle, and nobody wanted to risk their life. Everyone was looking forward to the day the witch would disappear.

But when that day actually came, these girls who became magical girls in order to survive discovered...

Without the witches, where would they get the seeds of lamentation?

What should we do if the number of Grief Seeds has decreased compared to the number of Magical Girls?

The relationships between the magical girls became increasingly tense, and battles between magical girls broke out in several cities that Hailing passed through.

Fortunately, during her time as a wanderer, Hailing had accumulated many seeds of lamentation, enough for her to use for a long time. In addition, due to her habit of wandering, few people would bother her.

Even if you try to cause her trouble, you'll most likely lose to her.

During her continued wanderings, Hailin noticed that the magical girls, driven mad by the near extinction of witches, had come up with a new solution.

Keeping familiars in captivity.

To transform a familiar into a witch, one must consume humans, utilizing the emotional power of ordinary people to become stronger, strong enough to give birth to the Seed of Grief.

Magical girls keeping familiars is tantamount to letting familiars kill ordinary people. In the eyes of ordinary people, these are nothing more than accidents, suicides, homicides, and other unnatural deaths.

No wonder Hailing hears all sorts of conversations everywhere she goes: "xxxx committed suicide, how many is that this year?" "A few days ago, a man who was abandoned by his ex-wife killed her entire family, how terrifying." "Last night, another motorcycle gang that was speeding and rioting killed someone on this street, there's no peace and quiet here."

Hailin did not choose to become one of them. She was only ten years old at the time and had been a magical girl for more than three years, wandering for three years.

Ten-year-old Hailing thought they were terrifying, even more terrifying than Witch Night.

Witch's Night is a witch, a monster, a beast.

But magical girls are human.

The most terrifying creature is humankind.

=========

The witches' temporary disappearance was due to the large-scale appearance of magical girls, but it wouldn't be long before, within three months, the total amount of Grief Seeds decreased, and the magical girls who could no longer obtain Grief Seeds would reach the end of their lifespan.

As long as magical girls exist, witches will never disappear.

More witches than ever before began to appear "without warning" across the country, and with the familiars kept by magical girls, the number of witches in the country suddenly swelled to an alarming degree.

A butterfly flapping its wings in Africa could cause a tornado in the Americas, and the aftershocks of Witch Night unleashed an even more devastating tsunami years after it left.

The fuse was lit when someone discovered that "magical girls are witches".

More witches were born, more magical girls learned the truth, more and more magical girls fell into despair, and so the number of witches increased again and again.

The birth of the witch also affects the world of ordinary people.

The economic downturn following the disaster and the oppressive social atmosphere led to more people despairing and choosing suicide or murder, making society even more hopeless.

A thick layer of clouds blocked out all the hopeful sunlight, shrouding the sky above.

The magical girls of the Witch Night era have become witches of the Witch Night era.

The real witch's night has arrived.

They experienced natural disasters, man-made calamities, and a period of internal strife akin to raising poisonous insects. Even as magical girls, they were stronger than magical girls of the past, and naturally, they became even stronger as witches.

The magical girls born after the disaster were unable to withstand such a powerful wave of witches, and the chaos lasted for a year. Those who survived learned to stick together.

If they can't win one-on-one, then they'll fight multiple opponents at once. Even if they only get one Seed of Sorrow each time, it's better than dying.

As it turned out, sticking together was the right thing to do. Led by Reed Plains, magical girls from major cities such as Kamihama, Kamisama, Namikawa, and Kawara formed their own groups and gradually quelled the wave by using group tactics.

【The Magical Girl Gathering of Reed Plains】

【Kamihama Magic Alliance】

【The Night Parade in the Divine Capital】

【Langhua Group】

[Kawarahara Magic Association]

......

They spontaneously formed an organization, established rules, and buried the truth along with the dust of the past.

Later generations referred to the period after the chaos subsided as the "post-Witch Night era".

Hailing, relying on the seeds of lamentation she had accumulated, watched quietly as the waves rose and fell, and when they subsided, she was already twelve years old.

At twelve years old, Hailing has already weathered more storms than most people.

In the post-Witch Night era, the power of witches has seen a comprehensive increase. Most witches, according to the standards of the Reed Plains Gathering, were only at the Safe to Normal level. Witches of Hard level or above were difficult for a single person to resist, unless they were "protagonists" who crawled out of hell.

Hailing hid for too long and missed an opportunity to become stronger.

She couldn't trample Hard-level witches underfoot like the "protagonists," nor did she join any organization. Instead, she continued her wandering life, occasionally joining small teams of new-era magical girls as temporary teammates. After acquiring a certain amount of Grief Seeds, she would leave again and head to the next place.

========

"...This is what has happened to me from nine years ago until now."

The Tale of Nirvana: Maintaining One's True Self: Chapter 74 - The Domestication of a Witch

"Holy crap... Hai Zi was awesome."

After hearing Hailing's story, Miaomeng couldn't think of any adjectives to describe it.

Chu Hua also had an expression that said, "Wow, that's amazing!"

Only Xiangzi wore a somber expression after hearing the story.

The impact of Witch Night was far greater than she had imagined. She thought the casualties and economic losses caused on the day of the landing were already terrible, but she never expected that the depressed social atmosphere of the past decade was all an aftereffect of Witch Night.

If Nirvana is truly...

If it really hatches...

Xiangzi closed his eyes.

She couldn't imagine that this guy would cause such a ruckus in the reed plains, and she couldn't even imagine that the guy who would cause such a ruckus in the reed plains in the future would be related to her.

Fortunately, I had just taken the medicine, so the other side of myself couldn't escape.

After the medication took effect, my mind became much calmer, and even the guilt and disgust of accidentally killing someone disappeared.

She is now able to think very calmly about the information that Hailing’s past brings.

Almost all of the magical girls who created the Witch's Night era are dead. Those witches who were kept in captivity were either killed or found a place to hide, like money.

"Hachiman, you're telling this story because the familiar that just attacked us is related to the witch we kept as a pet, right?"

"Of course, the attacks on homeless people by their familiars can only be related to the captive witches."

Hailing nodded and said.

"Captive breeding is a behavior unique to humans. Humans raise, breed, and domesticate wild animals in enclosures, and gradually wild animals become livestock."

"So witches can also be tamed. These tamed witches, after being nurtured with special skills, can more efficiently produce familiars with strong predatory instincts, which can then target and attack a specific group of people."

"Because the negative emotions generated by people of the same kind are more similar, it is easier for familiars to purify magic with the same characteristics, grow into witches faster, and the witches born in the end are more likely to have the desired characteristics."

"The hoarding-related characteristics I just mentioned were cultivated in this way."

"Hiss... This is like raising a witch like a chicken..." Meow Dream gasped. "Looks like I'm still a bit lacking when it comes to being wicked."

After accepting that commission, she always just went to the money barrier to collect the money directly, and never did anything like specifically luring money to kill someone.

"This is too much... It must be much more than just one generation to cultivate the witch we want. Those magical girls who keep witches as pets..." Chu Hua found it hard to believe. "How many people did they sacrifice to do this?"

“Just think about the suicide and crime rates during that period,” Hailing said calmly.

"By the way, Hai Zi."

Hailing's story also reminded Miaomeng of someone she had just met.

"Did you and Sister Mary become magical girls on the same day?"

"Have you seen Mary?"

"Damn it, I don't even want to talk about it anymore. You just held a knife to my neck for a few seconds, and that guy put his greatsword in the same spot, you know? I can't stand being threatened twice in five minutes. And then there's what Xiangzi and Chuzi did the other day. You guys have held a knife to my neck three times in three days, okay? I've never been so wronged in my life."

Miaomeng rolled her eyes dramatically, as if afraid no one would see it.

"How is she?" Hailing asked.

"It's not bad." Miao Meng's shoulders slumped, and she sighed, "It's so good that I feel guilty."

"I had no idea you felt guilty." Chu Hua glanced at her, a rare occurrence, with a look of utter disdain.

"When I do something immoral, I'm always fighting against my own guilt, okay! Don't underestimate my moral bottom line."

“It seems to be a very flexible moral bottom line,” Hailing said.

"Don't be like that... It's really rare for me to feel guilty."

While pretending to cry, Miaomeng told Xiangzi and Chuhua everything she had seen in the church.

"Finally, she said she told me all this so I could trust Hai Zi more. I was almost moved to tears, sob sob sob..."

"Sounds like something Mary would say."

"She seems to be a really nice person. I'd like to meet her," Chu Hua said, cupping her face in her hands.

“The day after tomorrow…” Hailing glanced at the time; it was almost two o’clock. “We can see each other tomorrow morning during Sunday prayers.”

"..."

"Toyokawa, what's wrong?"

Hailing noticed that Xiangzi hadn't said a word since the beginning.

“This is no small matter. Why haven’t the Protagonists reacted at all?” Xiangzi said, sharing his thoughts. “They went through that period and should know the characteristics of this type of witch very well.”

"unless......"

The lesson humanity learns from history is that it learns nothing.

The Protagonists of Reed Plains are also there...

“It’s not what you think,” Hailing said.

"What is Xiao Xiang thinking about?" Chu Hua tilted her head.